Convert family could face deportation back to Iran
by Barbara G. Baker
Compass (07.05.2001)/ HRWF International Secretariat (09.05.2001) - Website: http://www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net - An Iranian Christian family twice refused United Nations refugee status in Turkey were informed today that their case "does not merit reopening" for a third review.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Ankara has confirmed that Iranian convert Mahmoud Erfani's application for re-examination of his family's refugee status will not receive official consideration.
Together with his invalid wife and three daughters, Erfani fled across the Iranian border into Turkey nearly two years ago, on July 1, 1999. Now wheelchair-bound, Erfani's wife was diagnosed seven years ago with advancing multiple sclerosis.
Erfani, who was settled with his family in central Turkey's city of Nevsehir, received UNHCR rejection letters on September 24, 1999, and again on June 26, 2000, declaring that he had not provided sufficient proof that he qualified for religious asylum status. The family's temporary Turkish residence permits issued under UNHCR auspices expired on September 30, 2000.
The UNHCR confirmed its decision on Erfani's case late last week to the Istanbul Interparish Migrants Program (IIMP), a church-sponsored ministry jointly supported by the city's expatriate Protestant, Anglican and Catholic congregations as well as the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate.
"His options are very limited now," an IIMP representative told Compass. Unless full sponsorship is secured for the family through a church in an immigrant-friendly nation like Canada or Australia, Erfani and his family are subject to probable deportation by Turkish authorities back to Iran.
Although Erfani was reportedly sent a letter of deportation ordering his family to leave Turkey in late February, he confirmed to Compass that he had not accepted the document. He is required to sign in weekly at local police headquarters in Nevsehir.
Erfani, 45, and his wife, Atefeh, converted from Islam to Christianity in Mashhad, where they were baptized 20 years ago. Considered Iran's holiest city and a center of Islamic activism, Mashhad is a popular Shiite pilgrimage shrine in northeastern Iran.
Mashhad's two Protestant churches were closed down by Iranian authorities in 1985 and 1988, respectively, forcing the remaining convert believers underground to worship in their homes.
Since convert Christian pastor Hussein Soodmand was executed in Mashhad for apostasy in December, 1990, three other convert Christian families formally charged with apostasy have fled the city and obtained religious asylum in Europe and North America.
In addition, both the Tehran convert pastor who baptized the Erfani couple, as well as the local Presbyterian elder who first brought Erfani to church services in Mashhad, have also obtained religious asylum in Europe.
Erfani, however, could produce no written documents to prove he was under official threat of persecution for his faith by the Iranian government.
After being subjected to a series of terrifying hour-long abductions by local "savama" secret police during the last half of 1998, Erfani was evicted with his family from their home on the former Presbyterian church compound on March 17, 1999. When he learned a few months later that fellow converts were being arrested and called in for questioning about his whereabouts, Erfani secretly packed up his family and fled by bus across the Turkish border.
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HRWF International Secretariat (07.02.2001) C Website: http://www.hrwf.net C Email: info@hrwf.net C The policy of smothering the spread of the Christian faith, in place since the Islamic Revolution, is still being rigorously followed by the Ministry for Islamic Guidance (1979) which has refused to authorise the publication of "The Life of St Theresa of Lisieux" in Persian.
Importing and distributing Bibles in Iran is forbidden. The only translation of the Bible into Persian is now more than a century old, and despite being relatively accurate, the Arabic-slanted language used makes the version difficult to understand for a modern reader. Publication of a newer version is urgently needed, but Tehrans Bible Society has been banned since the Revolution.
For more than 20 years, authorisations to print Christian books have only been granted in dribs and drabs, and their distribution is banned, even within Christian milieus.
All publications, even those with a print run of less than 10 copies, must be censored before distribution. Even though several official organisations such as the National Library or Tehrans Faculty of Islamic Theology occasionally request books published by multi-denominational Christian publishers, the books can only be supplied if the request is accompanied by an official letter from the Ministry for Islamic Guidance.
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Emigration of Christians to the West
HRWF (05.02.2001) - Email info@hrwf.net - Website: http://www.hrwf.net - A procedure set up in Austria to help Christians to leave Iran and obtain a USA visa, almost automatically results in the granting of refugee status, Human Rights without Frontiers learned from a well informed source.
During Irans 1996 population census it was found there were only 78,000 ethnic Christians compared to a population of 60.1 million, a percentage of about 0.1%. Twenty years earlier however, there were 169,000 out of a population of 33.7 million, around 0.5%. Christians who have converted from Islam are not included in these statistics.
Some claim that the official figures are an underestimate, but the register held by the Chaldean archdiocese confirms the trend. In 1976, before the Islamic revolution, the register recorded 150 baptisms, 54 marriages and 93 burials. In 1996, there were only records for 36 baptisms, 13 marriages and 64 burials.
Incomplete records from the Armenian community, the largest Christian minority in Iran, show a trend in the same direction. A nursery in Tehran had only 100 children enrolled in 2000, compared to 300 in 1999. An Armenian primary school was forced to double the school fees as a result of the sharp drop in the number of school children enrolling. And finally, according to the Orthodox Armenian bishop of the Isphahan region, in 1999 his diocese lost 20% of its churchgoers, who had chosen to emigrate.
This acceleration of emigration could be explained by the setting up in Austria of a channel to help Christian emigrants and aid them to obtain a USA visa, steps that have proved to be very easy, with almost automatic results. This channel is only open to Christians, and more specifically, those who at the outset can pay a substantial sum of money per person.
Armenian Christians make up the largest group to rush into the breach. Although Christian minorities experience an undeniable lack of religious freedom, their reasons for leaving are primarily social and economic; emigrants cite difficulties in finding work, claim it is difficult, if not impossible to climb the social ladder, explain there is no future for their children, experience distrust from other minorities, and hope for a better life in a " Christian country ". In secondary position only come the religious arguments: danger for the faith of their children, no future for the church in Iran, and the impossibility of living and preaching their faith.
The preference given to economic reasons is better understood when considering the destination choice for the Armenian emigration; the West, and more particularly the USA. It would seem more likely that Armenians from Iran would have chosen the relatively close Armenia, where a population of 4 million freed from the Soviet yoke in 1989 is this year celebrating the 1700th anniversary of their evangelization. The Armenian Apostolic Church practically holds the status of state religion in Armenia.
In the Declaration of the Church leaders of the Middle East, at Cyprus in 1990 (*), concerning the massive emigration of Christians from the East, including Iran, the Church leaders of the region launched their most urgent alarm cry to date: " If this wave of emigration is not curbed, the autochtonous Christian presence in the Orient will one day be reduced to relics and monuments."
The wave of emigration affects firstly the elite, the wealthiest, the most ambitious and the most cultured. Dragged in the wake of their relative success are other individuals, less prepared for such an enterprise. These consist mainly of young men who choose to leave first; a phenomenon that results in a rapid aging and demographic destabilising of the Christian communities left behind. The numbers of young Christian girls left behind increase, many having no choice but to marry a Muslim, and therefore become Muslim themselves.
Converts from Islam form only a minuscule minority, but are quite different from the " Christian ethnic groups ". They are not part of an ethnic group viewed as coming from outside Iran, and are therefore better integrated into the country. They feel completely Iranian and lack the tendency to emigrate abroad, despite often experiencing pressure within their family or social circle, and occasional snubs from the authorities.
Irans Christian community is divided into seven denominations, and is the remaining ruins of an Eastern evangelisation that began in the 1st century CE. The Church was probably founded in the East before 79 CE by a disciple of St Thomas. It was later propagated quietly and peacefully in Mesopotamia and Japan. At the beginning of the second millennium, there were 80 million followers grouped into 240 dioceses. Today, it numbers only around a million scattered between Mesopotamia and America.
In his conclusion of the Synod for Asia, Pope Jean Paul II recalled the Persian merchants who had brought the Good News to China at the beginning of the 5th century, adding that " the first Christian church was eshtablished at the beginning of the 7th century. During the Tang dynasty (618-907), the Church flourished over nearly two centuries. The decline of the living Church in China at the end of the first millenium is one of the saddest chapters of the history of the people of God on this continent. But Christianity has nearly disappeared from these regions..."
(*) Source : Elie Austa in " Lmigration massive des chrtiens dOrient ", Etudes, Juillet-Ao?t 1990, p 106.
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